A few days before Christmas Eve, Nina came in town to spend some time with us before she headed home to host Christmas Eve at her house. While Nina was here, Matt and I celebrated my birthday in Celebration, FL and had so much fun. It was a much needed moment to ourselves and we cherished every uninterrupted minute. I even convinced Matt to lay in bed in the morning and watch a Hallmark Christmas movie. (Is it sad that that is my idea of an amazing morning?)
We also had lots of Christmas fun while Nina was here.
Nina got to play pirate and super heroes! You're a good sport Nina.
We made a trip over to the famous Twi-Light II motel in Holly Hill, FL. Let's just say...you've never seen this many inflatables in one place in your life. (And please excuse John's outfit...I have no idea why he was looking so rough for this momentous occasion.)
Now that's how you decorate a motel for Christmas!
Taking it all in!
Kissing baby Jesus!
Choo choo!
Opening presents with Nina!
Our attempt at a family pic. They are so hard to come by these days.
John getting the hang of this unwrapping stuff.
Miniature trash cans!!
We finally got a cold morning so we all bundled up and spent some time outside. It was lovely!
Went inside to do some dancing!
While daddy did some singing!
We were sad to drop Nina off at the airport on the 23rd, but the show had to go on. :(
John making cookies for Santa. We went easy this year because we had very little time to get the cookies made.
Who knows.
We read this a lot on Christmas Eve. Nap time and bed time...and play time...and any other time.
Late Christmas Eve afternoon we headed to see the ice skating rink on the beach. Loved the sand snowman!
Greetings for the ice skating rink! John loved just hanging out and watching. He said he really wanted to do this when he got "bigger."
Sand instead of snow. Watched the sunset and then we were off to Christmas Eve mass. It was the family mass and the priest gave the homily directly to the children. It was such a sweet mass for Christmas.
Got home just in time to put out the cookies and milk for Santa, and John said that he thought the reindeer would like grass so we gathered up a healthy portion of grass as well.
We tucked our little elf into bed and he went right to sleep! Hooray!
And lo and behold, Santa came afterall! He filled the stockings.
And left lots of things for John! We had to talk to Santa about keeping things pretty small this year. John has so much stuff, and we didn't want to have to find a bigger house because of Christmas.
Bed head checking out his goods! He was so excited!
He got pretty good at unwrapping presents! Funny little one insisted on unwrapping, then getting everything out of the box/wrapping, and then playing with it for awhile. We had to constantly remind him that there was more.
We even had to read each new book several times before we could proceed.
Sweet boy was so overwhelmed with Christmas morning that he was asleep at 11 am.
After a good nap, he was up and at em. He played all day and night and ate cookies and Cinnamon rolls alone. It was a wild day! The Treece's came over and had Christmas dinner with us and we very much enjoyed their company. It was my first time to cook a Christmas dinner, and I actually had fun with it. Felt so grown up.
And then the day after Christmas, we were graced with Nonny, Poppy, and Callynn's presence! We were so excited that they made the trek across the state to see us.
Opening more presents with Callynn!
Dinner at Ormond Beach Steakhouse!
And then on the 27th, we did our first tour of the Daytona Beach attraction, the Daytona Beach International Speedway. My dad was in heaven. He goes every year.
Taking a picture of him taking a picture of Dale Earnhardt. I think he may have teared up a little. ;)
Watching the race cars! John couldn't get enough of this!
"There's more race cars!"
John and Callynn in the driver's meeting room. For the record, I asked him to take his glasses off several times, but he was intent on wearing them.
View from the press box. I have to admit it. I'm pretty sure that we're going to have to go to a race while we're here. It is just something that you have to see once right? It is so much more impressive to see this in person than it is on television.
And sadly, today we had to pack up the Christmas stuff because Matt had the day off and my allergies couldn't handle the real tree any longer. It was rather depressing to put it all away, but so sweet to reflect on what an amazing year 2012 has been and what a great way to spend John's third Christmas. Feeling more blessed than ever!
Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!